Home Mortgage Raised, Paid After Long Battle With Bank

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Lynn Szymoniak's four-year foreclosure nightmare is finally over -- but the activist and her attorney said she couldn't finalize her exit without one final problem.

Her bank didn't tell her how much she owed on her Palm Beach County, Florida home.

Szymoniak began fighting with her bank in June 2008, when she said it improperly sought to raise the interest rate on her loan, increasing her monthly payments by roughly $1,000. She refused to pay, and has been embroiled in legal drama ever since.

In a recent court decision, it was determined that Szymoniak owed $1.4 million, a roughly $250,000 increase from the figure she'd been given as recently as February of this year. Her initial mortgage was for $1 million and she estimates the current value of her home to be around $500,000.

To end the drama, she agreed to pay and even received a $2,800 refund on her purchase.

Akerman Senterfitt, the lawyers for American Home Mortgage Servicing, with whom she's been battling, declined to comment for this story.

She had initially taken her mortgage out with now-defunct Option One bank, but when the foreclosure letters started coming, they were marked from Deutsche Bank. When contacted by Szymoniak, Deutsche Bank said American Home Mortgage Servicing was the responsible party.

While trying to beat the bank's effort to increase her rate, Szymoniak, a white-collar crime attorney, uncovered irregularities in bank paperwork. She said that important documents were fabricated and some signatures were forged.

She began documenting her findings, which ultimately led to allegations of massive, systemic fraud in the foreclosure process as banks cut corners to save money and, at times, appeared to foreclose on borrowers who had not missed any payments.

The wrongdoing turned out to extend to federally backed loans, and Szymoniak's findings became the basis of a lawsuit, which ended in a $95 million settlement between the government and several banks. Szymoniak, along with six other whistleblowers, received $46.5 million from the settlement.

The settlement check was enough for her to help provide aid to nonprofit groups that aim to help those without homes or are in danger of losing them, while still paying off her mortgage.

"For two months I've been trying to get a payoff figure on my loan," Szymoniak told an audience at the Netroots Nation conference Friday. "I could not get a figure from either the mortgage servicer or the attorneys for the bank. Last week . . . I actually had to go into court and file a pleading to order a payoff figure. The judge was incensed and said they had seven days to get me a payoff figure. On the seventh day, they filed and asked for a five day extension."

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